


A Year of Yesterdays

by summerstorm



Category: The OC
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-08
Updated: 2010-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/summerstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taylor loves Paris even when she has a boyfriend across the ocean that she's trying really hard to be faithful to, and then when she doesn't know if she has a boyfriend she should be faithful to, and even later when she's pretty sure she's just being celibate for no reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Year of Yesterdays

**Author's Note:**

> For katayla, who asked for Ryan/Taylor with the prompt "strawberries" in my holiday fic meme.

Paris is amazing. Sorbonne is amazing. It's amazing even when you're actually studying and don't have a rich Frenchman taking you around the country and making you get engaged to him and things. Taylor loves it. Taylor loves it even when she has a boyfriend across the ocean that she's trying really hard to be faithful to, and then when she doesn't know if she has a boyfriend she should be faithful to, and even later when she's pretty sure she's just being celibate for no reason.

That covers a couple of years. Then there's the year when she _knows_ she's being an idiot, and she doesn't owe Ryan any explanations because they haven't talked in three months, and clearly she should take advantage of all the hot French boys in her college, and the café she frequents, and her neighborhood, and the colleges nearby. She's accumulated a serious _pool_ of options just by talking to people who recognized her from TV, and honestly, she doesn't have to lift a finger for a philosophical debate to veer into mind-numbingly effective dirty talk. Such is the nature of the intellect.

When she gets her _license_ , Ryan doesn't show up, but oh, does she celebrate. Does she celebrate. It's—epically memorable, if she does say so herself. The whole month after her graduation is a list of things you should never tell your mother.

After that, of course, she has to start thinking about work, or masters, or Ph.D.'s. She's in the process of sorting out that part of her future when Summer calls to announce she's engaged.

"Again?" Taylor says warily. "Do you need my help getting unengaged? I've learned a thing or two from my divorce and my friends in Law school, I could probably swing that—"

"No," Summer says, outraged like what Taylor said was some kind of stretch. It's called a _patron_ , thank you. "We have a date. I'm getting married!"

Taylor can't help it: she squeals.

When Summer hangs up, she starts looking at Berkeley again. Berkeley is not about Ryan anymore, which means it is an _option_. She wants to go to grad school, and she wants to be there for Summer, and, all right, Paris is great and all, but the newness is gone and, well.

Okay. Taylor misses home.

*

Berkeley not being a Ryan thing, of course, doesn't mean Ryan isn't in Berkeley. Because he is. And Taylor can't avoid him when he's Seth's best man and by extension the person Summer begs Taylor to go cake-sampling with. Taylor takes pity on Summer, but only because Summer's already bought a dress and it's perfect and she can't not fit in it on her wedding day.

Ryan isn't as sympathetic towards Seth's fear of bloating. Or the fact that they're, quote, "picking a cake for somebody else's wedding. There's no way we're going to get it right. There's no way anyone but Summer is going to get it right."

"We're not picking her wedding cake for her, silly. We're just narrowing down the choices!"

"That sounds like picking to me," Ryan says, eyebrows raised.

Taylor makes a dissenting noise and turns in her chair to grab a notebook from her purse. There's already a pen on the table, over the napkin she was scribbling on before she realized a scrap of paper that small and that fragile just wouldn't do. "We're charting this out. We'll give her options and backups, all of them with a list of major flavors so she can cross off the ones she doesn't like without even tasting them, and, best of all, we'll have fun! And eat delicious food! Win-win."

Ryan's eyebrows stay raised for a moment, and then he gives in. Or, Taylor thinks he gives in. He's still not very good at that whole saying what you're thinking thing.

Then again, she's not being great about that either. She's almost a psychologist now, she can look at her normal self from the point of view of her therapist self and venture that guess. No, not that guess: that potential truth. Anyway, she has no room to judge. They _never broke up_. That is what's playing as a loop in her head as they hop from cake shop to cake shop—and oh, how Taylor wishes they could just hop on a plane to Paris and sample some of the creations from her favorite _pâtisseries_ —and she tries to stay present and pick up little half-forkfuls instead of stuff her mouth and regret it two shops later.

Ryan's right there, physically in front of her for the first time in she can't even remember, and being overall adorable and Taylor wants to hit him and she wants to kiss him and she wants to ask what the hell happened between them that she doesn't even know when they broke up or how or if they even did. But she can't just open her mouth and go, _Hey, Ryan, so you know how we were dating all these years? We're not anymore, right? I assume we're not, because if we were, boy, would you have reason to dump me now, but we never actually broke up, did we? Did you leave a voicemail I missed, maybe? Did I miss something I actually heard you say? What's going on?_ Even though that's what's going through her head. All the time.

She does talk, though. She talks about Sorbonne and picking psychology because it turns out you can make a career out of being awful at taking your own advice but great at giving it, and she talks about sweetness levels and flavor combos and heaviness, and she asks about Berkeley and pretty much answers herself, because he's not saying anything.

He's not saying anything. It's weirder than usual. He's not even tasting the cakes as much as he's looking at them and—well, Taylor guesses if she's on taste and presentation duty, he got assigned to, like, _make sure our wedding cake isn't a castle-shaped monster with strawberries for towers and a virginal veil of meringue_ duty, and maybe also _make sure our wedding cake is soundly built_ duty, judging by the way Ryan keeps going into the back and inspecting the foundation of the cakes Taylor's outside savoring.

The third time he does that and comes back out, she asks before he's even had a chance to sit down. She says, "Is there something wrong?" Simple, direct, serious, and using her eyes to force him into not just saying no.

Ryan looks at her for a moment and sits down. It looks like he may not answer, but then he meets Taylor's eyes—and dodges them again, but he meets them, and so they have their irreversible effect on him—and says, "I had a bad break-up."

Taylor's heart does a little dance of joy, because he brought it up, and then a little dance of sadness, because he brought it up, and then plays dead because that, that is vague, and she shouldn't read anything into a message that ambiguous. "I'm sorry," she attempts.

"It's fine," Ryan says. "It's been a while. It was just a—weird kind of break-up."

"I have a book about weird break-ups!" Taylor tilts her head. "I didn't write it, of course, though maybe I should; it gave me a lot of great ideas. Anyway, there's a chapter on how to get over a break-up when you never saw your partner very much in the first place. I wholeheartedly recommend it."

"Yeah," Ryan says, "you know when you date somebody, and you can't fly across the ocean and hide from them until they take the hint, you have to face them, and you keep bumping into them?"

"Oh," Taylor says, deflating. Stupid. She should say something. There's a chapter on that, too! She should mention that, except he wasn't referring to her, he dated somebody else and liked her enough to be heartbroken, and it doesn't look like a book would help him much. "Um. I'm sorry?"

"Yeah," says Ryan, and stands up, grabbing his jacket.

*

"So, who was she?" Taylor asks when the appropriate minute of silence has passed. "Did you meet her at Berkeley? _In_ Berkeley? Is it someone I know?"

"Who do you know at Berkeley?"

Taylor smirks. "Oh, you'd be surprised."

"I'm—sure I would," Ryan says confusedly.

"Does she remind you of Kirsten?" she soldiers on. "No, bad question, let me rephrase that: does she remind others of Kirsten? Because it's not too late to lecture you on Sigmund Freud—"

"Taylor," Ryan interrupts, "stop. Please."

Taylor lifts her hands in surrender.

*

He talks a little bit more after that. At least when she asks about what he's doing this summer, and when she accidentally gets him going about a project he did for school in spring. It's fascinating to hear him talk about architecture. It's like he forgets how awkward it should be, hanging out with Taylor, and just lets himself go.

She picks up another forkful of the cake she just tried, because the taste got lost in the conversation, but she's pretty sure she liked it. "Yes," she says. " _Exqui—_ " She blinks. "Yummy."

Ryan opens his mouth a little, like he's going to throw the word back at her until he thinks better of it and frowns instead, cocking his head.

"Summer told me saying random words in French made me sound pretentious," Taylor explains.

Talking about architecture must loosen him up in general, too, because the next thing coming out of his mouth is, "And that's different from everything else you still do how?"

" _Ryan_ ," Taylor says fondly, because, fine, he pretty much just insulted her, but it was in a joking tone, and also, _everything else you still do_ clearly implies an unspoken _I've been watching you_. In a non-stalky way. "I didn't know you thought I was pretentious! You should have told me. I would have tried to tone it down."

"I didn't say you should tone it down," Ryan says, shrugging.

Taylor shrugs back and suppresses a smile. _Bad break-up_ , she reminds herself. _Bad break-up not with you_.

*

The day of Seth and Summer's wedding, Taylor's pacing in the Cohens' living room when Ryan walks by. By the look on his face, Taylor can tell he didn't expect to run into her. Which is weird considering everything, but in any other circumstances Taylor would be with Summer, so. He has a point.

He stops on his tracks, though, and looks at her consideringly, and then he takes a deep breath, like he's steeling himself for something.

"It was weird," he begins. There's a pause. It's a really strange way to start a conversation, saying something that makes no sense without context and stopping.

Taylor frowns. "What?"

"My weird break-up," Ryan clarifies. "It was weird because she thought you and I were dating. And I couldn't really say we weren't, because we never really broke up."

"Yes!" Taylor squeals. Crap. "I mean, yes, exactly, that's what I kept—we never broke up."

"Yeah," Ryan says, trying to sound casual, "we were broken up, but we never really—"

He trails off, and she nods in agreement, engines turning in her head already. "Okay, so," Taylor says when they're done, nodding determinedly, "that is what we're doing now. We're breaking up."

"We are?" Ryan says. Taylor doesn't let herself be swayed by the instinct to jump him. This is serious.

"Yes. Officially. Retroactively. We break up now, and it counts for the last year and a half. Anything we did last year that we wouldn't have done if we had been in an official relationship: forgiven—no, not even forgiven, perfectly acceptable. Nothing we can hold over each other's heads. And in the fall, when I go to Berkeley, it will be like we spent that time apart, and we can go from there."

"You're coming to Berkeley?" Ryan asks, but it's not a panicked kind of question. Okay, it does sound kind of panicked, but not in a 100% negative way. Maybe like 20%.

"That's the other thing," Taylor says. "I didn't apply because of you. I want you to know that. We were, after all, officially broken up when I applied."

"Okay," Ryan says, "I guess I can deal with that."

"Good," Taylor says, nodding.

There's an awkward silence. There's still like an hour until the wedding begins, and Summer threw Taylor out of her room because Taylor was making her anxious, so she pretty much has nowhere else to be.

Ryan breaks the silence. "What exactly did you mean by _anything we did that we couldn't have done while in a relationship_?" he says slowly, eying her suspiciously. She looks away.

"Nothing," Taylor says, shrugging dismissively.

Ryan sets his jaw. She can see it out of the corner of her eye. She's good at that. "Okay," Ryan says slowly. "Just, if somebody writes a book about it," he says, and she looks at him then. He doesn't look like he's joking. She's never going to live that down, is she? "If somebody writes a book about it, and you know, tell me before it comes out. So I can warn everyone. And avoid every bookstore for a month."

That's fair. "You got a deal," Taylor says, and holds out her hand.

He grabs her collar and pulls her into a kiss. She's shell-shocked into not reacting, which means he has a chance to pull away, and her entire body tenses up because, no. No, he can't go away. She keeps his eyes on him in an attempt to ground him.

"You said we were broken up for a year," is all he says, his mouth a tight line.

"Year and a half, yes," Taylor says quickly. "You can totally do what you just did if that's what you're asking."

Ryan's mouth breaks into a tiny, lopsided smile, and he leans in and murmurs, "Yeah," against her lips before kissing her again.

This time, Taylor's more than ready.


End file.
